


when it feels like this

by CloudCover (RainyForecast)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Curse Breaking, Getting Together, Hockey Curses, Magic-Users, Magical Realism, Multi, Pining, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-26 00:45:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17735792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainyForecast/pseuds/CloudCover
Summary: Geno ends up with red, white and blue hair after the Caps game, so he’s the first person sent to the new cursebreaker when they make it back to Pittsburgh.Sid is in the lounge when Geno comes back out.“I’m know her,” Geno says despondently. “She’s cursebreaker on staff for media at Sochi.”





	when it feels like this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadhockeytrashbaby (aggressivelybicaptainamerica)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggressivelybicaptainamerica/gifts).



Geno ends up with red, white and blue hair after the Caps game, so he’s the first person sent to the new cursebreaker when they make it back to Pittsburgh.

Sid is in the lounge when Geno comes back out, with chamomile flowers stuck in his now normally-colored hair, and a poleaxed expression on his face. 

Sid can’t stop himself from reaching out to brush the petals from his hair, even though it’s probably too tender a gesture for what they’re supposed to be. 

“You okay?” he asks, a little concerned. He hopes there isn’t a problem, it’s going to be hard enough to adjust to someone new after Dave’s retirement. 

Geno leans back against the table and sighs, closing his eyes and tilting his face to the ceiling. Sid ignores the way it puts the long, biteable line of his neck on display. 

“I’m know her,” Geno says despondently. “She’s cursebreaker on staff for media at Sochi.” He groans. “I’m ask her out. More than one time. She say no, for career and distance.” 

Sid feels his stomach turn leaden. He and Geno hadn’t started up their… arrangement until after Sochi, but he’d definitely had feelings for Geno before then. Whereas Geno hadn’t, it seems. He imagines some nebulous Russian beauty, and thinks that even though she turned him down at Sochi, there’s no way she can remain impervious to Geno over the course of continued proximity. Well. He might be a little biased, but still. 

He’s not going to say or do anything stupid, he tells himself. He’s going to keep his mouth shut and is going to accept whatever Geno will give him for as long as Geno is willing to give it. 

 

***

 

In spite of his resolution to be sensible, Sid puts off seeing her as long as humanly possibly. He manages to make it a week before even laying eyes on her. But the fact remains that he’s Sidney Crosby, and he’s always going to attract more attention than anyone else. 

For a while he can get away with it. He just attracts a few little curses on his equipment, perpetually breaking skate laces and the like, and those Dana can deal with. He shakes his head and tells Sid that their cursebreaker would be better than him at strengthening the equipment wards, but he indulges Sid’s eccentricities as he usually does. 

Then they play the Flyers on the road. Sid hates their arena. It crackles with malevolent energy, all the hatred of the fanbase building up until it feels like the walls are dripping with it. He always used to visit Dave and get warded to kingdom come and back before games here, but this time, he just...doesn’t. Like the fool he is. 

He ignores the ill-intentioned magic he can feel tugging at him, hoping the NHL regulation wards will be enough to stave off most of it. 

And through the greater part of the game, the situation seems manageable. He can feel a painful ache in his chest that’s probably some sort of emotion curse, and halfway through the second period his mouthguard starts squirming around in his mouth like it’s alive. He just spits it out and asks Dana for a new one. Dana hands it over with a sigh and a shake of his head. 

It’s when he skates up to the ref during the third, opens his mouth, and can’t speak, that he gives up. He can’t captain his team like this. 

Feeling ashamed of himself, he’s forced to head down the tunnel, sit himself down in one of the training rooms, and wait. 

He jumps when the door opens. The cursebreaker sweeps in, a cloud of some expensive incense or perfume surrounding her. She doesn’t look like any cursebreaker he’s ever seen before. Dave had been fond of tweed jackets and cardigans with patches on the elbows. Not sky-high stilettos and chic black dresses. 

And she’s-- well. She’s possibly the most beautiful human being he’s ever seen. Even if she is looking at him with flinty displeasure in her smoky blue-green eyes. She sets down a sleek metal briefcase with a decisive thud that makes him jump.

“So, Sidney Crosby. You avoid until it’s this bad?” she says sternly, and Sid feels himself flush. She tsks at him and clicks open the latches of the case, giving him a long, assessing look before retrieving a rose quartz mortar and pestle. “I’m Anna Kasterova.” She rummages around a little more, dumping a handful of alarmingly orange berries into the mortar.  

“Sea buckthorn,” she says, and narrows her eyes at him. She leaves off her work, and comes closer. He fights the urge to lean away. He can feel her magic, and it doesn’t like him, he thinks. She lays a cool, elegant hand on each side of his face, and peers into his eyes. 

His heart goes crazy. He tries to tell himself it’s just her unfamiliar magic, and not the curve of her lips or the perfect arch of her cheekbones or the fact that Geno is going to marry her and have beautiful, long-legged babies with her and that-- 

“Shhhh,” she says, pressing her thumb between his eyes. “Don’t be so worry. What you so busy worry about, huh?” Her expression has softened, and her husky voice has gone warm. Sid shivers, and wants to bang his head against a wall. The last thing he needs to complicate things even further, is to  _ also  _ start crushing on Geno’s crush. 

She’s frowning at the air around his head, like she’s reading things he can’t see. “Stupid boy,” she says. “Why wait so long? Don’t like change?” 

Perfect, let her believe that. He shrugs, and she laughs. It’s devastating and he both wants to make her do it always, or possibly never to have to hear her do it again. 

“Hockey player and routine,” she murmurs, still amused, and goes back to her case, pulling out more items, berries and herbs and some kind of sweet-smelling resin that she places in a metal dish and lights on fire with a  snap of her perfectly manicured fingers.

“Breathe,” she tells Sid,and as he breathes in the smoke, the unnatural ache in his chest easing. He can’t help but sigh in relief, and she smirks a little. 

“See?” she says, and then takes on the curses littering his gear, murmuring words in Russian over his skates and laying her hands on his chest protector. He swears he can feel the wards strengthen, their frayed protection pulsing with new strength. Finally she makes him open his mouth and she paints his tongue with the mixture from her mortar. It’s a little oily, and tastes heavy and green. It feels cool as he swallows. 

“Try talk,” she commands, and he coughs, clearing his throat. 

“Thanks,” is all he can really say. “Sorry. About not coming to you sooner.” 

She hums in acknowledgement and smiles. He’s not sure he trusts that smile. She smiles like she knows things. 

Before she sends him back out to the tunnel, she tucks a sprig of chamomile flowers between his chest protector and his compression shirt. 

“Good luck,” she says, with another knowing smile. Her words feel heavy, and he knows that they mean more than if an ordinary person said them. The wards on his gear flare briefly in response to them. 

“Thank you,” he tells her again, grateful.  _ Thank you even though I have the feeling you’re going to end up breaking my heart.  _

“You’re welcome,” she tells him in Russian, smile going gentle again. “Go win, yes?”

When he steps out of the tunnel and returns to the bench, it’s like he can’t feel the animosity at all. The ice stretches out in front of him, empty and clean. No malevolence pressing down on his shoulders, no magic tugging and prying at him. If he closed his eyes, he could almost be at home. 

Dave was good, but he couldn’t do anything like this. 

Go win, she’d told him, and so he does. 

 

***

 

Sid tries not to obsess over their new cursebreaker, but it’s hard not to notice her any time she’s anywhere near, she’s that striking. He’ll feel the hum of magic as he turns a corner in a hallway or walks into a room, only to come upon her painting symbols on a wall, or conferring with Dana over a piece of malfunctioning equipment, or any number of other mysterious tasks. 

She doesn’t smile much, but when she nods hello at him he thinks her eyes look softer. At the very least, less disapproving.

He doesn’t know if Geno’s tried asking her out again and he’s not sure he wants to find out. 

Try as he might to put her from his mind, he can’t help but notice her hovering around the fringes of the hubbub during the annual Pens and Paws calendar shoot. The overly casual expression she’s wearing puts him in mind of his sister’s cat, when he wants attention but is trying to act too cool for it. 

She’s looking with laser focus at where a volunteer is minding a cage of kittens. Sid laughs to himself, and is about to call her over or something, when Geno’s voice rings out instead. 

“Anya!” he cries, followed with some Russian Sid can’t recognize. She says something drawling and sarcastic back, but reaches out to scratch the ears of the puppy Geno’s cradling in his arms after he makes his way to her. 

Sid can’t hear what they’re saying anymore, but he can see that she’s cooing something at the puppy and he can see how soft Geno’s smile is when he looks down at her. 

His mind suddenly replaces the puppy with an infant, doted on by her beautiful parents, and he wrenches his gaze away. 

The boxer mix whose leash he’s holding whines, and Sid strokes its sleek head. 

“I know, bud,” he tells it. “I know.”

 

***

 

Sid is half expecting Geno to say no the next time he invites him to spend the night, but Geno says yes. He lets Sid fuck him as slow and sweet as he wants. Usually he likes fast, and hard, and rough, and Sid is happy to go along with it because he doesn’t mind and they’re just fuckbuddies, after all. 

But it’s not all that Sid wants. So he makes love to Geno and Geno lets him, and after, he dares to lie there with his head on Geno’s chest for a little while. Indulging himself.

But eventually, Geno sits upright with a groan and heads to the bathroom to clean up. Sid drifts, staring half-lidded at the ceiling and wondering: if he tries hard enough, will he be able to imagine this as the relationship he wishes it were?

Geno appears in the bathroom doorway, leaning on the frame. He’s backlit and Sid can’t see his face. 

He looks at Sid for a long time, and when Sid makes an inquiring noise, he hears Geno take a deep breath. 

“I’m think about maybe ask Anna out.” 

Sid feels like a bolt of cold lighting has just shot through him. He stares at the ceiling, willing his face to go blank and still. He’s good at that. 

The hammer is falling, at last. He feels a sick sense of relief. At least he can really stop torturing himself with wishful maybes.

“Whatever you want to do, Geno,” Sid says, as blandly as he can. 

Geno stays in the doorway for another long moment, face still too shadowed for Sid to see. 

“Okay,” he finally says, and there’s something wrong in how he says it and in the brusqueness of his movements as he retrieves his clothes off of Sid’s bedroom floor, but Sid is too busy willing himself not to do something humiliating, and can’t parse it.

 

***

 

Sid needs extra warding pretty much every game, and he’s not going to be foolheaded enough to pull anything like avoiding their cursebreaker again. 

Anna eyes him critically before a game in Columbus, and adds a few extra ingredients to her mortar. 

“What’re those?” he asks her. 

“Hm, don’t know English. Baby part from pine tree.” She holds her thumb and first finger slightly apart to indicate something tiny. “From end of...stick part.” She frowns. Sid stifles the urge to smile. It’s kind of cute. 

“Buds?” he offers. 

“Yes, that,” she replies. “Pine buds.” 

“Smells like Christmas.” 

“In Russia, New Year is biggest holiday. That’s when there’s tree.” She takes the fragrant green paste from the bowl of the mortar and dabs a little onto his temples. 

“Yeah, that’s what Geno said,” Sid says, and mentally cringes as the reminder makes his stomach turn over. 

Anna’s still frowning a little at him, and she reaches out to press her thumb carefully to the thin skin under his eye. Her touch is cool. Her magic has felt different recently. It doesn’t feel like it dislikes Sid anymore. It feels… safe. Protective. Different from the cozy safety of Dave’s magic. That had felt like curling up in front of a fireplace. This feels like he has a pack of wolves snarling at his feet. Making him untouchable. 

“Sleep bad,” Anna says, and clicks her tongue in displeasure. “Always so worry. What’s worry now?” 

Being heartbroken and confused, that’s what’s keeping him up. Aching for Geno and bewildered by the way just being around her has started making him feel. 

“Hmm,” she says, but doesn’t share what she’s thinking. Instead she busies herself with her things, and hands him a handful of little squares of birch bark with symbols scratched into them.

“Columbus suck most, so give to team in dressing room, put in skates,” she tells him. “One for each skate. I’m not go, stink too bad, too many dick at same time.” That plus the faux-prissy expression she’s wearing surprise Sid into laughing. The embarrassing laugh that sounds like a goose and scrunches his face up.

She grins at him, and looks pleased with herself as she, like always, tucks chamomile in his gear and tells him to win. 

 

***

 

“The new cursebreaker is a  _ dime-piece _ !” Sid hears Beau saying from across the lounge. Sid sighs, and keeps listening in case he needs to go knock some heads together and give the “not in this dressing room, we don’t” lecture, again. 

“She scares me,” he hears Pooh reply. 

“She’s Russian, right, Geno?” Beau continues. “You know her?”

“Yes, Sunshine, all Russian know all other Russian. Big secret club.” 

Sid has to smile into his shake a little at the sarcasm dripping from Geno’s words. 

“Wonder if she likes younger dudes,” Beau continues dreamily. 

“You leave Anna alone,” Geno replies. 

“Are you seriously calling dibs, bro? Not fair!” 

The conversation then devolves into chirping Beau’s dick size and general ability to satisfy a woman properly. Sid rolls his eyes, and downs the dregs of his shake. 

“Shut up!” Geno’s voice rises above the rookie’s chatter. “I’m call dibs _,_ _because,_ already ask her out, going out for date next week, shut the fuck up!”

Something in Sid goes cold and still. He leaves the lounge, not wanting to hear any more. 

  
  


***

 

Arenas like Gila River make Sid nervous. Struggling franchises like the Yotes cut corners and let their wards get tattered and thin. The one saving grace is that there’s usually not enough fervor in the fan base to make the Penguins the target of the really nasty stuff they might see in Philly or Boston or Washington D.C. 

It’s not a given, however, and Sid doesn’t like the energy from the minute he steps into the building. He can feel that the wards are flimsy, and he can only hope that nothing insidious gets through. 

He makes a point of going to see Anna before the game. 

“Wards are bad; you can feel too?” she tells him, gently smearing some rosehip oil across his forehead. 

“Yeah.” He can’t perform magic like she can but he’s always been more sensitive than most. 

“Strongest protection,” she promises, following the oil with the ever-present sprig of chamomile flowers inside his jersey. 

The scent of the heavy perfume she wears has become something calming. He closes his eyes briefly. The room is quiet, the only sound the buzzing of the fluorescents and the muffled noise from the dressing room beyond. 

“I trust you,” he says, and opens his eyes. She’s looking back at him, inscrutable, but without the disapproval or sardonic edge of before. She studies him, and smiles. 

“Thank you,” she says in Russian. 

He trots out his hideous rendition of “you’re welcome” and she snickers at him as she pushes him out the door

“Go win game,” she says, and Sid wonders when this became a routine of theirs. 

“I’ll try,” he says as he always does, and goes to find his team. 

 

***

 

The game is tense and chippy, and Sid finds himself in the penalty box after a bullshit call in the third. The score is tied 1 to 1, both goals hard fought and ugly. Sid feels ready to gnaw through his mouthguard in frustration. 

He’s tracking the game, watching Geno come around the boards with the puck on his stick, when he feels the wards shred. 

He’s on his feet, fists pounding against the glass, screaming for the officials to open the fucking door when Geno goes down. 

He can feel the magic from here, and the vileness of it makes him gag. He grabs the arm of the official trying to yank him back onto the bench. 

“It’s a  _ curse _ ,” he says, over and over until they get out of his way and he stumbles back out onto the ice. 

Three strokes, four, of his skates before he’s there, spraying snow as he pulls up short. Something black is clouding the ice below Geno, spreading out like something alive, grasping for them. 

Geno’s eyes are open, but there are veins of black webbing his face like cracks in china. 

“ANNA,” Sid cries out, falling to his knees right at the edge of the black stain. His gloves are gone, he doesn’t know where his helmet went. “Someone get Anna!” He sharply waves away the skaters from both teams clustering nervously nearby. “Don’t let it touch you!” 

“What about you?” Tanger cries, but Sid shakes his head. He can feel the curse lapping at his hands and knees where they’re braced on the ice, like a snake tasting the air before it strikes. 

But all he can see is Geno, breath rattling out of him, like he’s-- 

He’s-- 

No. Not happening. 

He looks up, and Anna’s coming, somehow running across the ice in her ridiculous heels, hair streaming behind her. There’s a sound like glaciers grinding together each time her feet hit the ground. The amount of magic crackling from her would have leveled Sid were he not already on his knees. 

She shouts something in Russian and hurls a vial of some kind to shatter on the ice, some kind of oil, green as grass and smelling like spring. The stain curls away from it like a wounded thing. 

“Anna,” Sid pleads, and she kneels on the ice next to him, reaching out to Geno, putting one hand on his forehead and one on his chest. His body jolts like someone defibrillated in the movies. The air leaves Sid’s lungs like he’s been slammed into the ice as Anna’s magic hits him, a massive expanding wave of it. 

She can’t sustain that kind of power, he knows she can’t. He thinks she might be screaming through her bared teeth, but he can’t hear past the rushing in his ears, the blur of sound around them. 

She can’t do this, but he needs her to. That’s Geno, there on the ice, staring unseeing up at the rafters. That’s Geno.

Sid doesn’t have magic, but he reaches out anyway, gets a fistful of Geno’s jersey. 

“Come on G, don’t do this to me,” he begs. When Geno coughs, and his eyes flutter closed, the noise Sid makes isn’t really human. 

“Sid!” Anna is saying urgently. “Sid, feel.” She tugs at Sid’s hand and presses it to Geno’s chest. He shouldn’t be able to feel anything through the layers of gear, but maybe it’s Anna’s hand over his helping things along, because he can feel Geno’s heartbeat. 

As paramedics descend on them, and they’re forced to fall away to let them work, Sid swears he can still hear Geno’s heartbeat, fast but steady in his ears. 

 

***

 

Sid fucking hates hospitals. The smell, the harsh lighting. Everything. 

He’s still in his base layers, a pair of shorts thrown on for modesty’s sake. He probably reeks, but he can’t find it in himself to care as he watches the slow drip of the IV in Geno’s arm, the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. 

Anna’s curled up in a chair on Geno’s other side like a child, head resting on her pulled-up knees. Her magic feels banked and low, barely flickering. Her hair is tangled and her eye-makeup has smudged and flaked into two shadowy half moons beneath her eyes. Sid isn’t sure if she’s awake or sleeping. 

He looks at her and all he can feel is bone-deep gratitude. She’s extraordinary, he thinks. She nearly killed herself saving Geno. Not everyone would have succeeded. 

He can be happy for this, that Geno’s chosen her. 

He wouldn’t have been sure, but when he’d first came into the room, she’d been clutching at Geno’s hand with both of hers, leaning over to press her forehead to the back of it. You don’t do that to someone you don’t have feelings for, he thinks. 

He can be happy for this. Grateful, even, that the curse didn’t take Geno from them, that he can still have this. What shape “this” will take, he doesn’t know. 

Geno stirs. His eyes are bloodshot when they open, but they find Sid. 

“Hey, G,” Sid says softly. “Gave us a little bit of a scare, eh?”

“What’s...happen?”

“Nasty-ass curse. One of the— one of the worst I’ve ever seen. But Anna had you.” In lieu of reaching out to take Geno’s hand, Sid reflexively clutches at a corner of the blanket. 

“Anya,” Geno sighs, and rolls his head to his other side to look at her. 

As if she can feel him waking up, she raises her head, and gives him a gentle, tired smile. 

“Sooo..” Geno slurs. The painkillers they have him on must be strong. “So...pretty.” 

She laughs a little and wipes at her eyes. Sid shouldn’t be here. He rises to go. 

Geno fumbles for him, catching him around the wrist. “Sid. Don’t….worry. You...pretty too.”  His eyes are wide and earnest, brow furrowed, like he’s very concerned that Sid understand this.

“Thanks,” Sid says, and feels his smile wobble. “I’m gonna--”

“Sid,” Geno says, eyes still wide and vulnerable. He says something else in Russian, sounding mournful. He strokes his thumb across Sid’s wrist. And that’s it, Sid really, really has to leave now. He can feel exhausted tears prickling at his eyes. He tugs a little and Geno’s hand falls back to the bed. 

He compulsively glances back at Anna. She’s looking at him, but he can’t read her expression. 

“Take, um.” His voice cracks. “Take care of him, eh?”

And then he flees. 

 

***

 

Geno is going to miss a few games as he recovers, and Sid sinks into cowardice and avoids him and Anna both. 

He seems to get away with it for a home game against Dallas, but as they’re suiting up for a road game against Buffalo, his reckoning comes in the form of Anna storming into the locker room, icy eyed and furious. One of their poor WBS call-ups shrieks and hides his junk with someone’s helmet. 

Anna points at Sid. “You!” she says, at a volume and tone that create instant silence in the room. She crooks her finger at him, then spins on her heel and marches down the hall to the designated cursebreaker’s room. 

“I thought you’re done be stupid, but I’m forget. Man can  _ always  _ be more stupid,” she fumes, as she aggressively wipes a smear of dark, fragrant honey across Sid’s forehead.  

“Why is it always different?” is what he blurts, instead of addressing her annoyance.

“What different?” She crumbles some pale green leaves into the palm of one hand. 

“The stuff you do, before each game. Our old cursebreaker always did everything the same.” 

She shrugs. “Different place, different magic. These linden leaf.” She presses the palmful of leaves into the honey on Sid’s forehead, and blows the excess softly away. Sid looks away from the purse of her lips as she does it. 

Chamomile flowers and an admonishment to win, and the world doesn’t end. 

The new normal, he thinks as he walks back to the dressing room. He can handle it just fine. 

 

***

 

Sid’s tenuous grasp on things as they are is once again destroyed in form of two tall, well-dressed Russians, this time appearing on his doorstep on an off-day. 

“What’s...up?” he asks, wondering what the fuck is going on. 

“Oh  _ no _ ,” Anna says, looking him up and down. Sid bristles. It’s a day off. He can wear ratty pajama pants and an old Rimouski shirt if he wants. He scrubs self consciously at his hair as he steps back to let them in out of the cold. It’s always all dumb and sticking up before he gels it into submission. 

“Where’s floor you can clean?” Anna says briskly. She has her case with her.

“Are you gonna set some wards or something?” Sid asks, confused, as he leads her to the kitchen, Geno trailing a little sullenly along behind. 

“No,” she says, pacing the outer limits of the tile. She must be satisfied, because she sets her case on Sid’s counter and clicks it open. She removes a piece of chalk. 

“Can come off,” she promises, and starts some kind of design, pacing a couple steps before bending down to make a couple marks before moving on. It looks really involved. 

“Geno?” Sid asks. He’s thrown by what it feels like to see Geno back in his space after so long. He hasn’t been here, of course, since he and Anna had started going out. 

But Geno only shrugs. “She want do something, she’s do it.” That, Sid can believe. But it doesn’t answer the question of why they’re here. 

Anna eyes her design, scuffs one swirl away with her foot, and draws one that looks only slightly different in its place, 

Sid gives up. He steps carefully over the chalk lines to get to his countertop. 

“Tea?” he asks Geno. “Anna, do you want any tea?” 

It’s habit. He even still has a tin of Geno’s favorite imported brand in his cupboard. 

Geno seems to remember as well, because his voice is rough when he accepts. 

Anna is frowning mightily in concentration and has to be asked twice. When she catches sight of the tea tin with its Cyrillic label, she sighs. 

“Oh, Sid,” she says, and it makes Sid nervous, because what the fuck does that mean. If she’s figured it out and is feeling sorry for him—

“Stop thinking bad,” she tells him, before laying a chunk of some kind of crystal at the intersection of two of her chalk lines and a brass dish of some kind of dried herb at another. 

Geno is halfway through his cup of tea before she’s satisfied with her work. She eyes it, hands on hips, getting chalk dust on the expensive-looking long shirt thing she’s wearing over her leggings. 

She looks at Sid for a long moment, then finally explains.

“Take long because it’s for head. It’s for talking. Okay?” 

He’s not sure what she means, but Geno doesn’t look inclined to elaborate, and Sid supposes he trusts her. He stands where she tells him to, and watches as she kneels at the edge of the design, presses her spread fingertips to the chalk. And closes her eyes. 

Her magic surges. The lines begin to glow, first the ones she’s touching, then radiating outwards until the entire thing is aglow. There’s a rushing sound, swelling and growing until Sid isn’t sure it’s inside or outside his head, it feels like he’s standing next to a jet engine. Or inside one.

A sensation like cool water cascades over his head, but when he touches his hair, it’s dry. 

“What the hell did all of that do?” he says, and Anna’s mouth falls open. 

“It worked!” she says. “Oh, this continues to be terrible. How dare you sound so fucking cute in Russian.” 

“I—cute?  _ Russian _ ?” Sid sputters. 

“It lasts a couple hours,” Anna explains, and it’s beyond strange to understand her like this. “I felt like it was time for a very straightforward conversation. So. Language spell.” 

“A conversation?” Sid asks, suddenly a little terrified. “About what?” 

“Why does he have that accent?” Geno asks, and fuck, that’s  _ Geno _ . Speaking his own language, and Sid can understand him. Sid’s intimately familiar with Geno’s voice, the cadence of his speech, the words he uses. Or he was familiar. This is completely new.

“I have no idea. Maybe it’s the Russian equivalent of his Canadian accent. In any case, very provincial and very adorable. Really, Zhenya.” Anna gestures at Sid. “How could you resist him?” 

What. The fuck. 

“I couldn’t,” Geno says, low. 

“I think I need to sit down,” Sid says faintly. 

 

***

 

“Anna thinks I’ve made an assumption,” Geno says in the direction of his feet when they’ve awkwardly adjourned to the living room. 

Sid doesn’t know what to say to that so he just waits. 

“About you and me,” Geno continues. Sid’s eyes flick immediately to where Anna is sitting cross-legged in Sid’s most comfortable armchair. 

“Sidney,” she says, with some gentleness. “When you didn’t object to Zhenya pursuing me, were you trying to be noble?” 

Silence falls. Sid stares at her, and then at his hands. 

“Zhenya” Anna says to Geno. “I told you so.” 

“Fuck,” Geno breathes, staring at Sid first in horror, then in something more akin to anger. “I thought you didn’t care what the fuck I did.” 

“Of course I care!” Sid’s on his feet, weeks of pent-up emotion balling his fists and clenching his teeth. “I’ve fucking been in love with you for a fucking decade!” 

Geno’s white as a ghost, and his voice shakes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

Sid can’t help it, he laughs, and it’s ugly. “Would you have reacted well to finding out before we started fucking after Sochi? And after, you never acted like it was anything but casual, and I figured I would take what I could fucking get. I was just grateful to have  _ something _ .”

“Not fair, Sid,” Geno rasps, and Sid would like to tell him just where he can shove his opinion on Sid’s fucking feelings when Anna abruptly stands up, snapping her fingers with a sound like a firecracker going off. They both turn to look at her. 

“Stop yelling,” she says. “I hate it when men yell.” She sounds brittle and Sid’s shoulders slump in shame. 

“Sorry, Anna,” he says to her. “About all of this.” 

“Oh, honey,” she says, and folds her arms across her body like she’s trying to protect herself. “My coming here and falling for two idiots who were already in love with each other was hardly your fault.”

Sid’s head is spinning. He briefly entertains the thought that the spell from earlier has just made him hallucinate wildly instead of making him a fluent Russian speaker. 

“You, what? And no, Geno doesn’t lo--” 

“Yes, I fucking do, Sid,” Geno almost snarls, and Sid gapes at him. “It was wrong of me to, but I told you about Anna to see if… to see what you’d do.”

“That’s really fucking unfair to Anna, G,” Sid says, incredulous. “And how was I supposed to--” He rakes his fingers through his hair, and instead of the elation he always imagined he’d feel if he found out Geno loved him back, he just feels roiling dismay. 

“I’m an idiot sometimes,” Geno admits, shame-faced. “I don’t think first. Of all people, you know that about me. It’s not an excuse, but.”

“Can’t stay out of the fucking box, can you G?” Sid has to say, and despite everything, he feels the corners of his mouth twitch. 

“Not for the life of me,” Geno says softly. “Just like I couldn’t help falling for you.”

Sid’s mouth drops open. 

Anna laughs a little. “He’s a romantic in his mother tongue, isn’t he?” 

It jolts Sid out of his surprise. “Anna, you said--” 

“Ah,” she says, with a crooked, self-deprecating smile. “Right. I did say.” 

Sid isn’t a fan of the smile, or of the way she’s lifting her chin like she’s putting on a front. 

“ _ You _ ,” he gestures helplessly at her. “Like  _ me _ ?” 

“Why do you have such a problem imagining people falling for you, Sid?” she asks. 

“Well, but you’re…” He gestures futilely at her. “You’re... _ amazing _ .” Elemental and not a little terrifying, in the best way.  

He jumps as he feels Geno step up behind him and settle his hands on Sid’s waist.

“She’s a force of nature,” Geno rumbles in Sid’s ear. “Look at her. So beautiful.”

“I know she is,” Sid says, still a little confused. 

“Zhenya,” Anna says sharply. “We talked about this. This isn’t some kind of required package deal, where Sid has to put up with me. I have more self-respect than that.” 

It begins to dawn on him where they’re going with this. It’s unbelievable, but his pulse begins to race and he suddenly can’t stop smiling. 

“I’ve never felt anything like her magic,” Sid says, meeting Anna’s eyes. There’s a red flush blooming on her cheeks. Geno sighs into Sid’s hair. 

“Lucky. I never could sense magic like you do. What’s it like?” 

Sid shakes his head, not able to describe it, the heady mix of protectiveness and wildness. 

Maybe it’s the dizzying revelations of the afternoon, or the spell addling his brain, but to his absolute horror, when he opens his mouth, what comes out is: “your and Geno’s babies would be so  _ tall _ ” and Anna just  _ dissolves  _ into full blown laughter and sweeps across the room to take his face between her hands and kiss him, hard. 

“Ridiculous. You two  _ ridiculous men _ ,” she says. Her smile, Sid decides, when it’s this wide and this real, is as wonderful as Geno’s. Geno takes one hand off of Sid’s hip and leans over Sid’s shoulder to cup her face and kiss her too.

Her magic is...sparkling, fizzing along Sid’s skin like champagne. 

She likes him. She likes him and Geno loves him and he loves Geno and knows sure in his bones that loving her too would be an easy, inevitable fall. 

He can’t wait.

 

***

 

There’s a miniature cloud above Sid’s head right now, softly snowing onto his hair.

Anna is snickering, pleased with herself. 

“See? Can make little snow, just for you. Even if you in Miami.”

There’s been a hot debate about where they’re going for bye week. And, at present, chalk all over Geno’s garage floor. 

“How...how  _ long _ did this take you?” 

“Shhhh,” Anna says, with an airy wave. “No matter. Worth it for look on face.” 

Sid shakes his head, but he can’t help but smile into their kiss hello. 

“So cute,” she coos at him. “Snow prince.” 

She’s teasing but it still makes his face go red. “Can you please undo this so I can come into the house?” 

She leans into the doorway to the house and shouts something. Sid groans. Shortly, Geno appears in the doorway, and bursts out laughing as well. 

“Come on,” Sid complains, but he can’t help but feel good, watching his two favorite people in the entire world look so happy. 

Geno comes over to poke delightedly at the little cloud, and to kiss Sid deeply in the midst of a flurry of snowflakes.

“Very useful,” Geno says, straight-faced. “Can have romantic movie snow kiss anytime. Can you make it rain for serious love confession, too?”

“Please don—” 

But Anna claps her hands together, and the snow turns to heavy, pouring rain. Sid is soaked in seconds. 

“You’re supposed to break curses, not cast them,” Sid says. She shrugs, grinning. 

“Sidney,” Geno says, faux-desperately. “Have something to tell you. Run through whole airport, have to tell you before you leave forever!” 

“You’re mixing your cliches” Sid says, but he laughs as Geno catches him around the waist. He dips him dramatically before kissing him, passionately. 

Anna claps her hands again, and the rain stops. When Sid looks up, the little cloud is dissolving into nothing. 

Anna is eyeing the both of them and how their clothes are now plastered to their bodies with interest. 

“New plan. Maybe we dry you off, and go to bed. Now.” 

“It’s three in the afternoon,” Sid says, just to be obnoxious, before bounding up the steps to shake water all over Anna and make her shriek. “But, whatever the lady wants, eh?” 

Geno grins wolfishly at the both of them. “Always.” 

Sid lets Anna tow him into the house by the hand as Geno comes along behind. Because he can, he plants his feet at the bottom of the stairs and tugs Anna in for a deep kiss up against the wall. And she, because she wants to, lets him.

She hums into it, breaking the kiss just far enough to murmur “well?” against his lips. 

“Yeah,” he replies, and follows the loves of his life up the stairs. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Complete liberty taken with actual schedules and timelines. This fic takes place in a very handwave-y version of the 15/16 season.


End file.
